Are keywords rankings a zero sum game for our site?

[boxcarpress]

We’ve made pages with resources for our customers. These pages have been well received and gotten us some good traffic. But these pages only target our main keywords tangentially. If we continue to build up pages like this -- that give us traffic from our customers, but don’t directly target our main keywords -- will our target keywords -- and the pages that focus on those keywords -- suffer?

Is it a zero sum game for our web site? Does increasing rankings and pages for certain keywords mean that other keywords / pages decrease as a result?

[RobertFisher]

Boxcarpress,

It would help if there were a little more info, but I will take a stab at it.

No, it is not a zero sum game. Think of each page as needing to be optimized for its keyword and then insure that the mechanism to get to it is in no more than about three clicks.

While traffic from current customers can be good: If it causes a new sale, improves customer relations, allows them to be a repeat customer, etc. If you are building other pages for keywords not impacted by your current customer traffic, it will take longer to see a result unless it is around something that is highly searched. You must be clear that you are targeting keyword terms that are relevant to your business and are the queries used by those who use the search engines.

So, If you keyword is applesauce, and current customers don't go to that for whatever reason, then you need to do keyword research around applesauce. If the best search is "how to make applesauce" in terms of your site and what people search for, you must make that page be optimized for that search: Correct title tag, url, H1, H2, etc. You must make sure the content is relevant to that search - if I want to make applesauce and land on a page with pictures of different brands of applesauce and no recipe, I am probably bouncing in 5 seconds. If you show a pot of applesauce simmering on a stove and a clear recipe beneath it, you likely have my attention.

Keep the customer pages and keep working on the others.

Hope this helps.